13 July 2007: Bad luck? No just a General

Today was supposed to be a day of slow normalcy. It turned out to be much busier than I expected. It had nothing to do with Friday the 13th (I'm not superstitious). We started off with command maintenance. It takes about five minutes to perform operator maintenance on the Admiral. The big event in the morning was a general officer visit. In this case, it was a brigadier general from one of the commands in Kuwait. He turned out to be very personable. As usual for generals, he had an entourage. Accompanying him was a lieutenant colonel and a lieutenant (his aide). For about an hour we briefed him on the operations of our unit. My portion was devoted to my team’s various redeployment missions. He spent the majority of his time asking about my team. It only made sense, as my team constitutes the majority of the workload performed by the unit we’re attached to. The BG left seemingly impressed. He said he’d like to come observe my team on a mission sometime. That’s pretty much standard “attaboy” talk from a general. He may surprise us and show up, he may not.

Once the BG had cleared our area I got on with writing the AAR from the mission to FOB Warhorse. I kept getting interrupted for various reasons. Eventually I finished. We’ve got another mission upcoming. This time we’re headed back to Camp Liberty. Keep in mind that it’s part of a huge compound with lots of units. In order to prevent weather delays, I asked my team for volunteers to fly “space-A” early. To my surprise, several of them immediately said they would go. I put a staff sergeant in charge, who determined there were seats available on a C130 flight later that evening. I gave them their marching orders. Within a few hours I had a team on the ground in Baghdad. I’ll fly down in a couple of days. So long as there are no weather delays I’ll be there in time for the beginning of the mission. I’ll have a couple of other team members flying with me.

At the end of the day I was simply tired. It’s unusual for me to take a nap late in the afternoon. However, today was an exception. I slept from about 1745-1930. Then I took off to the DFAC. I paid the price. At 2300 I was wide awake. Being full of energy I went to the gym for a midnight workout. That did the trick. I was amazed how many Joes were working out. The gym stays open 24hrs. I just didn’t expect so many soldiers that late in the evening. I had no trouble getting to sleep when I got back to the room. This is where some of you will think, “eeewwww!! He went to bed straight from a workout? No shower?” Relax! I took a shower first. I’m not that resigned to being sweaty and hot all the time.